Term
Vanity address
A vanity address is a cryptocurrency address whose text starts (or ends) with a chosen pattern — generated by brute-forcing many random keys until one produces an address matching the desired prefix.
A vanity address is a wallet address whose visible text contains a chosen pattern — for example, an Ethereum address starting with "0xC0FFEE..." or a Bitcoin address starting with "1Love...". They are generated by brute-force: create random private keys, derive the address, check if it matches the target pattern, discard and try again if not.
The compute cost grows exponentially with the length of the desired prefix. A 4-character prefix is trivial (seconds); 6 characters takes minutes; 8+ characters can require serious GPU time. Beyond a certain length, vanity addresses become impractical without specialized hardware.
The critical security issue is how the vanity generation happens. Never use a third-party website that generates a vanity address for you — they could keep a copy of the private key and drain the address whenever it holds funds. Vanity generation must be done offline, on a machine you control, using open-source and reviewed tools.
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